On fourth down failures...“I think it hurt us, without question. When it's 14-14 late in the first half, we had 4th-and-3 on their 27 and just didn't convert. I thought we had a pretty good play call there that wasn't executed properly and they eventually go down and score, which kind of put us in a bind. Then in the second quarter we go down there and get another non-conversion on a fourth down when it looked like we had the momentum tied up. We just didn't do it. Then they go down and consequently score on that. That's 14 points that they got that we didn't.”

On the turnover battle...“You have to come up on the plus end on those and we didn't. I thought our guys really came in and had a lot of effort, a lot of energy and we just couldn't sustain it. As the game went on, I thought Iowa State gained more confidence and felt a lot better about their play.”

On Steele Jantz...“I like Steele. I've always been a fan of Steele's. I think he's a good football player, I think he provide a spark. I think he's kind of a fear- less player. I think he has the ability to pull the ball down and make some runs with his feet.”

On not scoring on the first drive...“Yeah it's tough. You know Iowa State is good in the red zone. People have had a hard time scoring on them. If we don't fumble it, at least maybe we get a field goal, so that was very unfortunate.”

On his third quarter interception...“We've got to clean it up, whatever it takes and it's unfortunate. Defense played good at times and we didn't capitalize on offense. We can't put them in that kind of a bind so we've got to play better.”

On starting 0-4 in conference play...“It's disappointing, it's really disappointing. You've worked your tail off for eight months, preparing for 13 games; we thought we'd be in a better position. We have to go back to the drawing board and practice hard and see what happens. We've still got five games.”

On his third quarter interception...“My first read was the high hat of the O-lineman and my second read was the splits of two and three and it was tight so I was. I learned there was going to be a switch and I had to fight to push back inside and I guess the quarterback didn't see me underneath.”

On stalled drives in Iowa State territory....“It is very frustrating because I felt like the defense came up and they came ready to play the game with stops where we needed to go ahead in the game and to really beat them. But we just kept stalling out with turnovers and shooting ourselves in the foot and that's how I feel like we lost the game today.”

On failing to score on the first drive...“It was very important because scoring on the first drive means something. It lets the opponents know that we came to play and the first drive just didn't go our way and it kind of went downhill from there.”

IOWA STATE QUOTES

Head Coach Paul Rhoads

Opening statement...“I'm very proud of our football team. We were composed, energized and played together in all three phases. It was a good win coming off two losses for our football program.”

On Steele Jantz...“There hasn't been a lot of drop off in his practice snaps and repetition. Coach Messingham put together a great game plan for him to manage, and Jantz did that and even more. There is a reason he's been our starting quarterback for the past two years. He's a physical- ly gifted player. You never get to a point where you can say it for certain without looking at the film, but this, very certainly, could have been his best overall game as an Iowa State Cyclone. He's been playing Division I football for over a year and a half. He has somewhere over 10-12 starts in his career at this level. It takes time. Will it happen again next week? I don't know, but we sure saw it tonight.”

On Jake Knott...“He's a leader of our football program. He's a two-time captain, which tells you what his teammates think of him. Great players make great plays in big games, and I promise you, every game in the Big 12 is a big game.”

On Knott's shoulder...“He injured it last year. Any time you play linebacker, you're going to get banged up and you're going to be sore. He's sore like he is a lot of days playing that position.”

On Jarvis West...“This was easily his best game. It was fun to see him making the big catches and catching the ball in his fingers away from his body.
I was very thrilled with his play. He had a smile on his face and had a lot of congratulations coming at him from a lot of different places.”

Senior Linebacker A.J. Klein

On holding Baylor to 21 points...“We knew that they were going to try and come out and spread the ball. We made adjustments early in the first half. We gave up two big plays, which we probably shouldn't have given up. Great defensive effort, we forced turnovers and had a big stop on the goal line to start off the game. Overall a good performance but we missed some tackles and missed some opportunities that we can make and will show up the in the future.”

Senior Linebacker Jake Knott

On his shoulder...“I went into the game saying I wasn't going to think about. I can deal with it tomorrow, I'm used to that. We will take everything day by day.”

On the defensive effort...“Not just credit to our defense, but credit to our offense. Staying on the field as long as they did and key situations converting on third downs. The whole team did well tonight.”